High tech low tech: Plastic Armor

[oneofmanynameless]

How effective would low tech armor made out of modern plastic be?

How heavy would it be? What would it's DR/Cost/Weight/Don by compared to the armors on Lowtech pg. 110-111? Would it have reduced DR against any particular damage types? etc.

Would it be comparable to plate? To hardened leather?

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by oneofmanynameless

How effective would low tech armor made out of modern plastic be?

Depends on the plastic and the design? Most modern plastic imitations of low tech armor are lightweight costume pieces and would have DR 0 (maybe DR 1 vs crushing), but something like HDPE plates would stop medieval weapons just fine, at least for a while (though most of them will be better against crushing than impaling).

[oneofmanynameless]

Well let's consider a couple of use cases:
PVC
HDPE
Whatever plastic football shoulder plates are made of...

[Sorenant]

Football Shoulder Pads are DR 3/1 (higher for crushing, lower for everything else) according to HT, the helmet doubles that.
Edit: Check also Pyramid #3-85 for the article "Cutting Edge Armor Design", it has stats for designing armors made with plastic (and other similar materials).

[AlexanderHowl]

Plastics tend to provide semi-ablative armor if rigid because they are designed to break before their wearer breaks, absorbing any damage at the cost of their structural integrity. Modern steels are much better for low tech armor, as they provide three times the DR for the same mass.

[oneofmanynameless]

Yeah. I've read the high-tech low-tech rules from high-tech and know about metal armor. I was just specifically wondering about the effectiveness, weight, etc for plastics.

[DanHoward]

To get a piece of plastic to provide the same DR as steel it would need to be considerably thicker and heavier.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by DanHoward

To get a piece of plastic to provide the same DR as steel it would need to be considerably thicker and heavier.

Thicker, yes. Heavier, no. A UHMWPE/HDPE level III plate is less than half the weight of a level III steel plate (it's about three times as thick, though).

[Tyneras]

From Pyramid #3/85, your plastic options at TL7 are, for the same DR as steel, 50% heavier and 7 times as thick or roughly equal weight and 8 times as thick. At TL8 its half as heavy and 7 times as thick.

For any reasonable DR you'd have armor one to several inches thick. When I think "plastic" I tend to think of the TL7 stuff, not the more advanced composites.

[Imbicatus]

As a former poor SCA heavy fighter, I have used plastic armor, and DR 3/1 sounds about right. It did blunt the sting of our rattan weapons quite a bit, but I still got nasty bruises quite often. I’m sure any hit by a heavier crushing weapon like a metal mace or even a heavy club would result in broken bones. Any actual cutting, impaling, or piercing damage would go through it like butter.

Higher thickness would be more protective, but that rigidity would hinder movement and should probably give a penalty to DX, that is not based on weight but just the thickness of the plastic plates moving against each other and you.